During a speech Thursday in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump unveiled another piece of his education policy—this one dealing with college tuition.
The Republican presidential nominee framed the proposal as another means to address the lack of opportunity for many American families. And unlike Democratic proposals that offer “free” tuition at taxpayer expense, his focuses on the tax breaks many colleges and universities receive without any assurance that the cost of attendance will fall.
He said:
One of the biggest problems facing young people and families today is the cost of college education. The cost of college has increased by over 500 percent since 1973.
But what a lot of people don’t know is that universities get massive tax breaks for their massive endowments. These huge multibillion-dollar endowments are tax-free, but too many of these universities don’t use the money to help with tuition and student debt.
Instead, these universities use the money to pay their administrators, or put donors’ names on buildings or just store the money away. In fact, many universities spend more on private equity fund managers than tuition programs.
But they should be using the money on the students—for tuition, for student life and for student housing.
On top of that, the federal government spends over $70 billion in higher education every year, plus another $130 billion on federal loans.
Here again, the universities don’t use the money to reduce the price of college—but to increase it.
We have to break this cycle. I’m going to work with Congress on reforms to make sure that if universities want access to all of these special federal tax breaks and tax dollars—paid for by you—that they are making a good faith effort to reduce the cost of college and student debt and to spend their endowments on their own students.
Earlier in the speech, Trump said a “first-class public school education, as well as options for alternatives through charter schools, school choice and homeschooling,” is a right in America, not a privilege.
“The opportunity to attend a two- or four-year college or to pursue a trade or a skill set through vocational and technical education, should be easier to access, pay for and finish,” he added. “Education is the bedrock of our society.”
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